What should the role of the United Nations be? Discuss

United Nations (UN)

Written By: Kheng Kheng

United Nations (UN), international organization established immediately after World War II. It replaced the League of Nations. In 1945, when the UN was founded, there were 51 members; 193 nations are now members of the organization. The mission and work of the United Nations are guided by the purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter.

Due to the powers vested in its Charter and its unique international character, the United Nations can take action on the issues confronting humanity in the 21st century, such as peace and security, climate change, sustainable development, human rights, disarmament, terrorism, humanitarian and health emergencies, gender equality, governance, food production, and more.

The UN also provides a forum for its members to express their views in the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, and other bodies and committees. By enabling dialogue between its members, and by hosting negotiations, the Organization has become a mechanism for governments to find areas of agreement and solve problems together.

The UN's Chief Administrative Officer is the Secretary-General.

The official languages of the UN are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. The working languages of the General Assembly are English, French, and Spanish (in the Security Council only English and French are working languages).

Role of United Nations

Written By: Louis Foo

As the most representative inter-governmental organization of the world today, the United Nations' role in world affairs is irreplaceable by any other international or regional organizations. The United Nations has made enormous positive contributions in maintaining international peace and security, promoting cooperation among states and international development. Today, people of the world still face the two major issues of peace and development. Only by international cooperation can mankind meet the challenges of the global and regional issues. The United Nations can play a pivotal and positive role in this regard. Strengthening the role of the United Nations in the new century and promoting the establishment of a just and reasonable international political and economic order goes along with the trend of history and is in the interest of all nations.

In order to strengthen the role of the United Nations, efforts should be made to uphold the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. The authority of the Security Council in maintaining international peace and security must be preserved and role of the United Nations in development area should be strengthened. To strengthen the role of the United Nations, it is essential to ensure to all Member States of the United Nations the right to equal participation in international affairs and the rights and interests of the developing countries should be safeguarded.

The work of the UN is global, touching the lives of billions of people. The work of the Organization is, however, mostly done locally, within regions and countries. In order to accomplish this, the UN and the many entities comprising the “UN system” have created a presence in every region of the world, so the people most in need of help can be reached quickly. The UN’s work is divided into five geographical regions: Africa, Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, and the Middle East.

United Nation Job

Written By: Ying Jie

Maintain international peace and security

The United Nations came into being in 1945, following the devastation of the Second World War, with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security. The UN does this by working to prevent conflict; helping parties in conflict make peace; peacekeeping; and creating the conditions to allow peace to hold and flourish. These activities often overlap and should reinforce one another, to be effective. The UN Security Council has the primary responsibility for international peace and security. The General Assembly and the Secretary-General play major, important, and complementary roles, along with other UN offices and bodies.

Promote sustainable development

From the start in 1945, one of the main priorities of the United Nations was to “achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”  Improving people’s well-being continues to be one of the main focuses of the UN. The global understanding of development has changed over the years, and countries now have agreed that sustainable development – development that promotes prosperity and economic opportunity, greater social well-being, and protection of the environment – offers the best path forward for improving the lives of people everywhere.

Protect the Human rights

The term “human rights” was mentioned seven times in the UN's founding Charter, making the promotion and protection of human rights a key purpose and guiding principle of the Organization.  In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights brought human rights into the realm of international law.  Since then, the Organization has diligently protected human rights through legal instruments and on-the-ground activities.

Deliver the Humanitarian aid

One of the purposes of the United Nations, as stated in its Charter, is "to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character."  The UN first did this in the aftermath of the Second World War on the devastated continent of Europe, which it helped to rebuild.  The Organization is now relied upon by the international community to coordinate humanitarian relief operations due to natural and man-made disasters in areas beyond the relief capacity of national authorities alone.

Uphold the international law

The UN Charter, in its Preamble, set an objective: "to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained". Ever since, the development of, and respect for international law has been a key part of the work of the Organization.  This work is carried out in many ways - by courts, tribunals, multilateral treaties - and by the Security Council, which can approve peacekeeping missions, impose sanctions, or authorize the use of force when there is a threat to international peace and security, if it deems this necessary.  These powers are given to it by the UN Charter, which is considered an international treaty.  As such, it is an instrument of international law, and UN Member States are bound by it.  The UN Charter codifies the major principles of international relations, from sovereign equality of States to the prohibition of the use of force in international relations.

Main Organs

Written By: Wei Kean

The main organs of the UN are the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, Secretariat and others. 

General Assembly

The General Assembly is the main deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the UN. All 193 Member States of the UN are represented in the General Assembly, making it the only UN body with universal representation. Decisions on important questions, such as those on peace and security, admission of new members and budgetary matters, require a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly.

Security Council

The Security Council has primary responsibility, under the UN Charter, for the maintenance of international peace and security. The Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression. It calls upon the parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement. In some cases, the Security Council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorize the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council is the principal body for coordination, policy review, policy dialogue and recommendations on economic, social and environmental issues, as well as implementation of internationally agreed development goals. It serves as the central mechanism for activities of the UN system and its specialized agencies in the economic, social and environmental fields, supervising subsidiary and expert bodies. 

Secretariat
The Secretariat comprises the Secretary-General and tens of thousands of international UN staff members who carry out the day-to-day work of the UN as mandated by the General Assembly and the Organisation's other principal organs. UN staff members are recruited internationally and locally, and work in duty stations and on peacekeeping missions all around the world.  But serving the cause of peace in a violent world is a dangerous occupation.

References

United Nations (2016) [ONLINE] Available at: ://www.un.org/en/index.html [Accessed 5 May 2016]

The role of the United Nations in Middle East (2015) [ONLINE] Available at: http://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/role-united-nations-middle-east-conflict-prevention [Accessed 5 May 2016]

The United Nations' History & Role in International Politics. (2015) [ONLINE] Available at: http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-united-nations-history-role-in-international-politics.html [Accessed 5 May 2016]

The Next Generation Library. 2016. United Nations: Objectives and Roles of United Nations. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/uno/united-nations-objectives-and-roles-of-united-nations/40332/

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 2016. The role of the United Nations Security Council [ONLINE] Available at: http://dfat.gov.au/international-relations/international-organisations/un/unsc-2013-2014/Pages/the-role-of-the-united-nations-security-council.aspx [Accessed 5 May 2016]

The current tax system is unfair to the middle class and lower income groups do you agree?

Written BY: Ying Jie

            Tax system in Malaysia was introduced by the British colonial government by 1948 while in 1967 the Malaysia tax laws were administered by Inland Revenue Board (IRB). Thus, the income tax laws were consolidated and revised to create a unified federal income tax law which was enacted by the Parliament and became effective throughout Malaysia.

            The Malaysian personal income tax is a progressive system. The tax is based on chargeable income (the total earned income minus all non-tax deductions and rebates) and has been made progressive through the imposition of a progressive tax rate structure (see Table 1). All resident individuals are liable to be taxed on income accrued in and derived from Malaysia or received in Malaysia from outside Malaysia.

The individual is taxed on the taxable income, which is derived after deducting the various tax deductions from the chargeable income. The taxable income is subjected to a graduated tax rate that rises from 0% to 26% with the effect from the year of assessment, 2010, shown in Table 1. It is clear that a progressive income tax structure has been created by the imposition of rising marginal tax rates (the rate relevant to the last ringgit) on higher income brackets. For example, on the first RM2,500 of taxable income, no tax is imposed, but on the last RM100 (000 or more), the maximum rate of 26% is applied.

Written BY: Kheng Kheng

            Meanwhile, do the tax system fair to all the people? Certainly not because tax system in Malaysia is unfair to middle and low income people. While the most benefit in Malaysia tax system is high income people which the Government charged higher taxes to higher people but the high income people can get the rebates from their expenses, commitments and loans which all these can help high income people to getting rebates from the government. For example, high income people can ‘escape’ the personal income taxes by buying new cars which the act had mention that buying cars can be getting rebates because its consider as your expenses. What if the low and middle income people? All these circumstances had not benefits to them because they did not have any extra money to purchase new vehicles or new houses so it had increased their commitment because they could not get any rebates from the government. In a small summary, the personal income taxes had only fair to high income people but it is not benefit to low and middle income people because the taxes have not achieved fairness and balance to all the people. In general, although the deductions lower the taxes payable by all taxpayers, they favour higher income tax payers by providing them with greater tax savings. In other words, the amount of income that escapes taxation as a result of these deductions is larger for higher income tax payers than for their lower income counterparts. By favouring higher income taxpayers, these allowances and deductions contradict the principle of progressivity.

           Deductions granted in the form of deductions from the chargeable income, therefore, may reduce the progressivity of the tax system as the higher income tax payers gain a greater tax saving from an identical deduction relative to lower income tax payers. This discrepancy arises because the size of the tax saving from a deduction awarded in this manner depends on the marginal tax rate of the taxpayer. The higher the marginal tax rate faced by the tax payer, the higher the tax saving from the deductions granted. Because higher income taxpayers face a higher marginal tax rate under a progressive tax structure, they will enjoy greater tax savings.

Written BY: Wei Kean

           Before the implementation of GST, our taxation system collected taxes only from 25 % of the population. Another 75 % of the citizens only paid service charge and other national taxes. However, with the implementation of GST, all traders became tax collectors on behalf of the government collecting the goods and services tax. Nobody can escape from GST. All citizens must pay tax and those who withdrew money from abroad also had to pay for the service inclusive of GST.

Thus the impact of GST on the low income earners especially those who had no financial mean and depending on study loans or family finance would incur a higher monthly expenditure. According to a report, 45% of the undergraduates from institutions of higher learning were offered a salary less than RM1500 after graduation. Compared to the national average income of Malaysians, this group would be placed under the category of the lower middle group.

Some products have no GST. If there is a selective consumption of goods and food, one may be able to avoid GST. However, some traders had transferred the additional cost due to GST to the consumers and eventually the public faced the problem of inflation. Thus the cost of living had increased and it was impossible to avoid GST.

If students could not shoulder the financial burden, they would transfer the load to the family. At present our national domestic debt had reached 87.1% of the national gross domestic product (GDP). A big chunk of the family expenditure was financing loans. Once they could not manage their financial debt, more and more people would choose bankruptcy as the last resort. It was similar to US subprime mortgage crisis and our study loan crisis may erupt anytime in our country.

There were proposals to learn from other nations like imposing GST on the rich, taxed on selected items, rejecting luxurious purchases and facing hard times together with the Rakyat. Besides that, there were also proposals to increase the income tax rate, enlarging the circle of taxpayers and making higher income group to pay more tax. We could also learn from France which imposed a maximum tax rate until 75% on the rich or introduced a redistribution of social resources.

Written BY: Louis Foo

The above measures were a success in North European countries but not in France as some areas could not implement them at all. The writer believed that taxation should not be based mainly on the income of a worker. It should maintain the approach of more wages for more work to spur the economic growth. Hence it is better for the government to tax more on capital gains rather than taxing the ordinary Rakyat.

When our former Prime Minister Mahathir came into power, he introduced many trader- friendly policies. The corporate tax was reduced from 40% to 25%. We should regard tax collection as a mechanism for redistribution of wealth. Taxing more on the corporate sector is tantamount to reclaiming profit from basic resources. At the same time to reinvest, providing subsidies and maintaining the resources at an acceptable state.

As far as the nation is concerned, this policy is fair and just to the society. The youth and the undergraduates of the institutions of higher learning were financially weak. They should be exempted from taxation but to receive social aid before being employed. This gives them a fair chance to survive in the society and to prevent the vicious cycle of borrowing to spend.

A proper tax collection system will bring development to the nation. On the contrary, a poor system may ignite a fuse to overthrow the government in power.

In conclusion, the tax system in Malaysia is unfair to low and middle class people which the system has many mistakes to the nation so I think that the tax system in Malaysia have to improve because it does not have benefit to all the people. It has been argued that several factors undermine the ability of the personal income tax system to narrow the income gap among tax payers. Malaysia's income tax system attempts to promote fairness and maintain its progressive structure by relying on progressive marginal tax rates. Unfortunately, this progression in marginal tax rates is the main source of the problems that have eroded the progressivity of the individual income tax, for example, granting greater tax savings for the rich as well as encouraging tax evasion.

Reference:
The Edge Malaysia (2013) Taxing Issues [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.pwc.com/my/en/assets/press/130923-the-edge-taxing-issues-jagdev-singh.pdf [Accessed 3 May 2016] 

Malaysian Tax System (2010) [ONLINE] Available at: http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/1155/4/BAB_1.pdf [Accessed 3 May 2016]

PWC (2015) Malaysian Tax and Business Booklet [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.pwc.com/my/en/assets/publications/2016-malaysian-tax-business-booklet.pdf [Accessed 3 May 2016]

Tough Nickel (2016) Malaysian Tax Issues for Expatriates and Non-Residents [ONLINE] Available at: https://toughnickel.com/personal-finance/Quick-Guide-to-Malaysian-Tax-for-Expartrites-and-Non-Residents [Accessed 3 May 2016]

Yong Kuan Chen (2012) THE PROGRESSIVITY OF THE MALAYSIAN PERSONAL INCOME TAX SYSTEM [ONLINE] Available at: http://web.usm.my/km/30(2)2012/KM%2030(2)%20ART%202%20(27-43).pdf [Accessed 3 May 2016]

 Huang Kang Wei (2015) Protest against the unfair implementation of GST [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.malaysianchinesenews.com/2015/04/protest-against-the-unfair-implementation-of-gst/ [Accessed 3 May 2016]